The chief executive of Manchester’s crisis-hit mental health trust has got a new job heading up an even bigger NHS trust.

Michele Moran, under whose leadership Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust has been scrapped and taken over by another organisation amid financial disarray, is being seconded to head up NHS Humber.

In a statement MMHSCT said she had been an ‘excellent, high performing CEO’ and had achieved ‘a successful sustainable future for staff and patients’.

But two Manchester MPs have reacted with amazement – describing the higher echelons of the NHS as a ‘merry-go-round’ and a ‘revolving door’.

Ms Moran had been chief executive at the trust for four years, during a period in which it struggled with major financial challenges.

Last October it announced plans to cut eight services in a bid to save £1.5m, only a fraction of the shortfall it was facing, a move that was met with uproar.

At the same time the M.E.N. revealed the trust was due to be wound up due to its long-term problems,

The next day Ms Moran told a council committee that was untrue, but a few weeks later it was confirmed that a neighbouring organisation would take it over.

In the end Greater Manchester West, which runs mental health services in Trafford, Salford and Bolton, won the bid to run the city’s mental health services and last month the cuts were withdrawn after a patient took the trust and clinical commissioners to court.

Ms Moran will now move to become interim chief executive at NHS Humber, which oversees the care of a 600,000-strong population and provides community therapies and mental health services.

Neither trust has responded to requests for information on her new salary.

In a statement, MMHSCT said: “Chief executive Michele Moran is leaving the trust to take up a secondment as chief executive of Humber NHS Foundation Trust. She will take up her new role on 5 September.

“Michele’s key priority over the past two years has been to ensure the organisation works towards a successful sustainable future for staff and patients. This has now been achieved.”

Trust chair John Scampion added: “Michele, who has led the Trust since 2012, has been an excellent, high-performing CEO and it is essential her skills are retained by the NHS.

“Michele will be succeeded by her deputy, John Harrop, who will serve as Acting Chief Executive during her secondment.

“John’s central objective will be to provide continuity and ensure the progress made during the past four years is sustained in the months ahead.”

Manchester Central MP Lucy Powell questioned Ms Moran’s new role.

“I think the public would, rightly, ask whether someone who has just overseen such difficulty should just walk straight into another highly paid job,” she said. “It smacks of the NHS revolving door syndrome.”

Michele Moran, Manchester Mental Health and Social Care Trust chief executive can be seen here speaking in June 2015 at a Manchester University event to introducing a new mobile application [APP] which aims to help people who suffer a mental health issue.

Our Aims: About Us

To support users and ex-users of psychiatric services in the Manchester area. The organisation provides a forum for services users to have a bona fide say in planning and provision of mental health services.

Protesters in King’s Lynn fight against mental health service cuts

Protesters took to the streets of King’s Lynn to voice their anger at what they described as “continuous” cutbacks to mental health services in west Norfolk.

Mental health cuts protest

A protest march against cuts to mental health services and the Fermoy Unit at the QEH took place in King's Lynn town centre. Picture: Matthew Usher.

More than 100 campaigners marched from The Walks through the town centre before finishing outside the Majestic Cinema.

Peter Smith, former parliamentary candidate for south-west Norfolk said: “We are in the fight of our lives here.”

The protest was triggered by the Fermoy Unit, an in-patient NHS facility in Lynn for mental health, which campaigners say faces an uncertain future. The unit was briefly closed to new admissions earlier this month, but reopened last week, albeit with fewer beds.

Mr Smith said: “In my lifetime we have never had to fight like this, but what is the alternative?”

But Debbie White, director of operations for Norfolk at the Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust, said there were now no plans to axe the Fermoy Unit.

She added: “It is right that mental health services should be valued and funded on the same level as acute health services, and it is understandable people feel passionate about the Fermoy Unit remaining open.”

Labour party activist Jo Rust insisted the issue would not disappear. She said: “They have been talking about closing it for a long time. We will fight and we will not let them do that.”

Beth Anthony, 18 of Dersingham, said: “We are here to protest against the continuous cuts to the mental health service, we think it’s unacceptable. My younger brother suffers from poor mental health and has to travel to London... That is to the detriment of my family because we have to pay for him to go down by train every single month.”